The Collective Model of the Household and an Unexpected Implication for Child Labor : Hypothesis and an Empirical Test

Basu and Ray use the collective model of the household and show, theoretically, that as the woman's power rises, child labor will initially fall, but beyond a point it will tend to rise again. A household with a balanced power structure between the husband and the wife is least likely to send its children to work. An empirical test of this relationship using data from Nepal strongly corroborates the theoretical hypothesis.This paper - a product of the Office of the Senior Vice President, Development Economics - is part of a larger effort in the Bank to understand how gender affects development outcomes and to identify the causes of poverty. The authors may be contacted at kbasu@mit.edu or ranjan.ray@utas.edu.au